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Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
|module_first_published=March 17, 2020 |series= |isbn=}} Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is an upcoming sourcebook that details the continent of Wildemount from the Critical Role campaign setting for the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Dungeons & Dragons|website=dnd.wizards.com|access-date=2020-01-16}} Matthew Mercer, creator of the setting, said the book is "meant to be both, you know, for fans of Critical Role" and "for people who have never watched an episode. It's an entirely new setting to set an entire campaign or more in". Summary Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is the first Wizards of the Coast official Critical Role campaign setting book. "The 304-page campaign guide takes players to a continent rife with conflict and magic" and details the four distinct regions of Wildemount in world of Exandria. It includes a starting adventure (levels 1-3) for each region, three new subclasses, a new school of magic called Dunamancy, over 20 new monsters, and new magic items called the Vestiges of Divergence. James Haeck, a designer on the book, said "There's just so much crammed into this. It's a 300 plus page book. It's got four adventures. It's got like 50 new spells or something. ... It's got a full gazetteer of the entire world. It's got factions and characters and like I don't know how all of this stuff fit in. A ton of stuff was cut too - how did we make all this? I don't know". Chris Perkins, Wizards of the Coast internal lead on the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, said, "Exandria, which is the world in which Wildemount is a continent, fits into the D&D multiverse insofar as it is another world in the material plane. So just like Eberron or Toril, or Krynn, or Athas, it exists in that same sphere. ... This is a universe born out of one man's imagination, for the most part. And, it is also born out a livestream game. This is kind of a first for official D&D campaign settings. ... In terms of the world itself and what differentiates it, I think that it's a unique blend of classic D&D adventuring with kind of a political background. A tense moment in the history of Exandria where great political powers are vying for control over one continent's resources. A continent that has seen its fair share of calamities in the past. The characters have a chance to prevent another one, effectively. And that's kind of interesting." Publication history The new sourcebook was announced on January 13, 2020 after being leaked through an Amazon product listing on January 12, 2020. It will be published on March 17, 2020. Mercer said "about half the art in the book comes directly from the Critical Role community. All artists that, for the most part, had never worked for Wizards before". ''Inverse'' reported that the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount follows the trend of Wizards of the Coast publishing material that originated in Dungeons & Dragons live play series. Acquisitions Incorporated (2019) was based on the live play series it was named after and in Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus (2019) "storylines from Joe Manganiello’s character Arkhan (who has joined Critical Role on occasion)" were incorporated. ComicBook highlighted that Wizards of the Coast has a deliberately slow development process "with the D&D team formally releasing about three books a year. One of these three annual books is a full length campaign, which leaves two publishing slots to publish new rulebooks, updated adventures, and other supplementary publications like campaign setting books. To help keep up with demand, D&D has also published several collaborations over the past three years, which is how Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Acquisitions Incorporated, and presumably Explorer's Guide to Wildemount were all added to the schedule in addition to D&D's three annual publications". The book will also be available as a digital product through the following Wizards of the Coast licensees: D&D Beyond, Fantasy Grounds, and Roll20. Related products Critical Role Critical Role is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons with Mercer as the Dungeon Master and creator of the world Exandria. A number of licensed works based on the show have been created, including the upcoming Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. The continent of Wildemount, created by Mercer, was first mentioned in "Campaign one" of Critical Role as the place the villainous Delilah and Sylas Briarwood originated from and later as the home continent of Sam Riegel's player character Taryon Darrington. Critical Role RPG Episode 86|last=|first=|date=March 15, 2017|website=YouTube|publisher=Geek & Sundry|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=January 16, 2020}} Wildemount is the main setting of "Campaign two" of Critical Role. Explorer's Guide to Wildemount will include series canon up to episode 50 of "Campaign two". Haeck said "right at the beginning of the book, we make it very clear that this book is set in a very specific point of time and that your canon will diverge wildly from that of Critical Role". Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting In 2017, the Critical Role team and Green Ronin Publishing released a sourcebook on the Exandria continent of Tal'Dorei which was the primary setting of "Campaign one". Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting was released using the Wizards of the Coast Open Game License and is not considered "official" Dungeons & Dragons material (unlike the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount which will be published by Wizards of the Coast and is considered "official" material). The book does include a brief description of Wildemount in a section on the distant regions of Exandria. Reception On January 13, 2020, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount "rocketed to #3 on Amazon's best sellers list, then, according to Wizards of the Coast’s Greg Tito, reached the #1 spot by Monday afternoon. Through pre-orders alone, Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has become the best-selling book on Amazon, outpacing New York Times best sellers and all other books". Corey Plante, for Inverse, reported that "in terms of new mechanics, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount could be even more significant to D&D than Wizards' November release, Eberron: Rising From the Last War, which introduced Artificer as a new class thanks to the unique school of magic Matthew Mercer created for Critical Role Season 2: Dunamancy. ... At a more fundamental level, dunamancy acknowledges the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which asserts that an infinite number of branching timelines exist. ... How this will be presented in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount remains to be seen, but it already sounds exciting". In response to questions on whether the book was canon and whether it had gone through rigorous playtesting, Jeremy Crawford, the lead rules designer of Dungeons & Dragons, confirmed that the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is an official Wizards of the Coast product. He wrote that "like every D&D book, its rules have been tested by players, developed by the D&D team, and vetted by me". Sead Fadilpasic, for TheGamer, reported on the negative criticism the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount announcement received and on Matthew Mercer's response on Reddit. Fadilpasic wrote that Mercer "addressed the frustrations of many fans in terms of the campaign setting, as many people would much rather see Planescape instead of Wildemount - he agrees with them, and stresses that the choice of Wildemount changes nothing in any existing plans the Wizards may have for those legacy settings. Mercer and his work have been met with a lot of criticism throughout the years, mostly because of the effect he's had on the D&D space. ... His post garnered a lot of attention - mostly positive - with people praising his work and encouraging him, going to show that while those with disparaging opinions and voices may be loud, they still do not make up the entire community". Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook, highlighted the differences in the publication history of 4th and 5th Edition: "by this point in 4th Edition, we had campaign setting books for the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, the Shadowfell, Eberron, and the Underdark. By comparison, we've gotten campaign setting books for the Sword Coast and Eberron, along with Ravnica and now Wildemount". Hoffer also reported on the divide between fans of older Dungeons & Dragons settings and fans of the newer third-party inspired settings. He wrote "I think that some of these issues could be solved by peeking into the pipeline and getting some confirmation that more campaign settings are being worked on. ... D&D released a 'living document' for Eberron over a year before Eberron: Rising From the Last War came out, and I think that more documents like that would serve as a solid olive branch and give all D&D fans more of the content they crave. I also think opening up some more campaign settings for use in DMs Guild publications could help sate demand. ... The success of Fifth Edition means that there's not a rush to publish material before it becomes obsolete, and that means that the timeline that D&D books will come out is a lot slower". References External links * Wizards of the Coast Product Overview * [https://critrole.com/ Critical Role official website] * [https://shop.critrole.com/products/explorers-guide-to-wildemount Explorer's Guide to Wildemount on Critical Role website] Category:Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings Category:Dungeons & Dragons modules